Message
by AlyCat3
Summary: 'It was raining. Of course it was raining, because this night just couldn't possibly get any worse'-Mikey whump, and Don panicking.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own any version of this franchise, just borrow them from time to time

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It was raining. Of course it was raining, because this night just couldn't possibly get any worse! As if to add insult to injury, when I raised my parched throat skyward to what was most likely acid rain, hey after my luck tonight I'd believe anything, but before the first few drops even fell into my mouth I began coughing again.

My body was shaking so hard I was sure more blood had managed to ooze out, like I wasn't already soaked through to my shell from that dip in the river, now I probably had hypothermia to cap it all off.

I knew I gave a pathetic sort of moan which I would later deny, even as my body betrayed me and let my head fall back face down with an insultingly wet slap. I was laying there, drowning in my own blood and stinking water and seriously debating drinking it and just ending my own misery, at least the parched throat part, when I heard a very soft, very tentative "He-hey, are you okay?"

I startled and at once reached for my weapons, only to moan and curse on myself at even that brief movement. How was I still bleeding? Hadn't it all just come out yet, maybe then the pain would stop. I didn't get a chance to think on it long because whoever had spoken was now shuffling forward, speaking again. "Look, my mom warned me about homeless people, and how they'd mug you and stuff, but if you're hurt, I mean there's lots of blood leading back there and-"

It was a kid, I decided, and despite the high pitched cracking suggesting puberty I'd hazard a guess at boy. When he continued to prattle on I came to an enlightening conclusion, a) this is how my brothers must feel about me all the time, which is probably why they abandoned me to the gutter, and b) he wasn't going away.

Forcing one eye, then the other open I got a hazy look at what I was quickly accepting as karma a la death. I couldn't make out any details, most of the street lights in this part of town had been broken by local vandals long ago, but my eyes finally focused in on a figure at the beginning of my little dead end, hehe how ironic, with either batman wings spread wide or an umbrella over his head. My vision was already tunneling out so it was kind of hard to tell which.

It was only as he began to move forward again, his feet insultingly loud to my pounding head, that realization slammed back into me. I didn't know this person, he could be a foot ninja trying a new tactic on me, I mean they had to take those things off and have faces underneath them right?

It was as my mind cataloged this that it also came to the conclusion I was going to die. Okay all joking aside, I wanted to live! I had too much to live for! I had a new comic book issue coming out this month, and a series finale to watch. Plus my brothers still owed me an apology, it was there fault I was in this mess, and I was not going out without that!

My mental babble was abruptly cut off by the kids words saying, "- call 911 alright cause you're like not even moving any more and-"

"No." I snapped, finally feeling a flicker of warmth surge through me, and ending with a coughing fit in my throat. When that was finally passed and I spoke again, I was horrified to hear the sound of my own gruff voice, was I turning into Raph? Before my brain could derail again I blurted, "no," then quickly pressed on thinking fast, "ugh, I don't have insurance. Look I need you to go to-" I broke off again, my mind floundering. Send him to the lair and expose my brothers, or send him to April and Casey's and very possibly expose our very human friends. I was now as torn on the inside as I was on the outside, either way I felt the danger far out weighed the pros, but I had tried getting home on my own and look how well that turned out.

I sat there agonizing for so long that Babble started again, "I think you really did die, because it kind of looked like you stopped breathing under, whatever you're laying under and my mom's going to get worried so I-"

Taking a leap of faith I blurted out an address and after another coughing fit wheezed, "tell them Mikey sent you." I paused again, and felt a smile twitching across my mouth, possibly my last one ever. "Tell them the pizza's getting cold."

When he took a few steps back again, but hesitated and looked back at me, I realized something else. This was it, my one and only chance to get home. Suddenly I would have given up everything in the world for that one simple place, that I had taken for granted. So I ignored the tears, pushed past the pain, and let go of any dignity I had left and managed, "please." Then I passed out.

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There's only going to be three chapters total, and they're already written out, so I'll post the next one tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed!


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own any version of this franchise, just borrow them from time to time

A/N: To the guest who asked, all of my fics are based in the 2k3 verse in my mind, though I like to believe it can be read in any universe intelligibly, unless otherwise noted.

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The plan actually went off without a hitch, which should have been a foreshadowing of the rest of the night. On one of Leo's solo training run's he'd come across a major Purple Dragon's operation, they were importing and exporting all sorts of high artillery through a down town warehouse by the docks. Showing far more sense then Raph and Mikey combined, he'd come back to the lair, rounded the rest of us up, and we'd come to the senses that it needed to be stopped pronto, so we made a plan.

After some brief recon on the place, I determined that it was impossible to sneak in, they had the place trip wired and censored at every turn, and if one of those was turned off it would in turn set off another. Somebody much smarter then a Dragon Dropout had come up with this set up, and I was hoping to hack their system and find out who, while Raph and Leo took care of the in house stock, then we'd blow the place sky high.

Mikey's part of the plan was both the simplest and most dangerous. Since there was no way we were going to ninja ourselves in, we were going for an outright diversion. Mikey would 'accidentally' stumble upon the outside guards, and when they gave chase, hopefully calling on comrades for backup, the three of us would sneak in and take care of business. We were relying on Mike's speed and mouth to keep them distracted for the few minutes this whole plan would take.

"It's supposed to rain sometime within the hour," I reminded them all, handing the two brothers that were going in with me their share of the bombs.

"Yeah, yeah," Mikey chanted, hopping from foot to foot in anticipation, "like a little rain's going to hurt us. Can we get a move on, I'm hungry." Before any of us could even begin to respond to that he snapped his fingers and and continued on, "Hey, I bet I can keep these guys out of your way long enough, and beat you back home with a pizza."

Leo shook his head before turning and leaned into a crouch to start observing the warehouse. Raph glared at Mikey. "Last time you were supposed to go out and get dinner, you came back with it half empty and stone cold. How do you even manage that?"

"You know he does it on purpose right?" I asked him casually, shifting through my bag to triple check I had everything. "It's so you won't be tempted to eat it when he wants it later."

Mikey huffed and crossed his arms, casting his eyes skyward as he declared, "I have no idea what you're talking about," and then before any of us could say another word he back flipped off the side of the building and disappeared.

Raph shook his head in disbelief before walking over to Leo's still crouched form and giving him a nudge with his foot. "Come on, we'd better get a move on, or Mike's distraction will be as big a waste as the rest of him."

Leo stood and the three of us began making our way into the shadows of neighboring buildings, waiting for the plan to start. While we waited for the guards in front of us to run off, Leo leaned over and whispered, "are you sure it's a good idea to send Mikey into that alone?"

I reviewed my plan again, but saw no flaw in it. Our baby brother could out stripe any one of us on a good day, these guys should be no problem to him, even outnumbered as he was. "Relax Leo," I breathed back, "despite his jokes, Mikey knows when to take things seriously."

Said brother chose that moment to pop up, upside down, in front of the three guards we were watching and say in his best innocent tone of voice, "Hey, how's it going? You guys don't by chance happen to know where the little turtles room is, do you?" Without another word he jogged off into the night, staying well insight of his pursuers. Not a full ten seconds later, we heard more shouts, and right on schedule, Mike had cleared the out side guards in three minutes flat.

"Okay," I muttered to the other two, "it's now or never." We darted inside, and despite my best efforts in turning off as many alarms as possible, we did indeed trip at least one silent alarm. I hesitated for a moment, but Michelangelo had done his job well, and no one came rushing in. Leo and Raph dispersed to do their own parts, and once inside I quickly made my way to what was once obviously some kind of office and easily hacked into the system, clearly whoever set this up had been confident enough about the outside to not worry about the inside, their mistake.

We were out of there in seven minutes easy, and making our way home with high spirits. The fact that we saw several firetrucks and police cars heading in the opposite direction raised the mood considerably.

Once home I went straight to my lab to start the downloading process, but left the door open so that when Mikey came home he couldn't just dodge to the bathroom and take care of any of his wounds he may get from the scuffle. Not that he should get any, if my calculations were correct, but sometimes we all had a tendency to downplay things we shouldn't which could easily turn into bigger unimaginable things.

I'd only been working on it for a few minutes when the smell hit me. Ugh, who was burning garbage?

My program was self running, so there was nothing more I could do for the moment but let my curiosity get the better of me, and I made my way out towards the source of the smell, the kitchen.

Raph was at the stove poking something in a pot with a fork, the source of the smell. Overcoming the urge to plug my nose as I spoke to him was a hard task but I pulled it off as I asked, "did you decided to boil cockroaches or something?"

He glanced up with a look of disgust on his face before snapping at me, "No, I figured you were right and Mike probably won't be back for hours on his 'pizza run' and I'm hungry now. Excuse me if the smell's too strong."

I waved my hand in front of my face several times, but it did no good to blow away that stench. "Well whatever you're concocting in there, let me run it through a decontamination bath before you start eating it. I don't want radioactive poisoning thank you very much."

"Ha ha," Raph grumbled, going back to stirring with his metal fork, "fine no stew for you."

I shuddered, deciding I'd take cold pizza any day, and almost turned right around into a worried faced Leo. He took one look inside the kitchen then drew his phone back to his face while asking, "Have either of you heard from Mikey, he's not answering his phone, and I'm getting worried." He was so distracted that even though his nose was twitching in irritation, the smell didn't actually seem to register until after he'd gotten done speaking, then his whole face screwed up with disgust. "Blech, what died in here?"

"Your mom," Raph snapped, not bothering to turn around this time, "and no stew for you either."

I grabbed Leo by the elbow and hauled him out of there for both of our sake's, maybe my sense of smell would come back to me in a year. The stench wasn't nearly as strong in the living room so I chose there to answer his question, "No Leo, but we all turned our phones off before going in there. He's probably standing in line at the pizzeria and just hasn't turned his back on yet. Now I'm going up to the garage before I have to spend the night in the bathroom."

Leo looked as if he truly envied me this, but his eyes ghosted towards the lair door and he instead made his way over to the television saying, "Yeah, you're probably right."

I shook my head at the worry wart before taking the elevator up to the clean smelling, if slightly musty air of the garage above. I had only taken one step out of the elevator when my hand reflexively snatched the bo' staff out of its holster and took a stance as I heard pounding on the garage door. The elevator doors were beginning to close and I considered jumping in them and going back down for the other two at this unknown danger, then a stranger spoke, "-not in there then that guy's going to die and I don't even know if this is the right address and it's still raining. Okay, think Bobby, maybe if you go back there the Mikey guy really will be dead, then you can just call the cops and hopefully-"

Later I would probably admit that I panicked. At the time though my mind was already reacting before the rest of me could let it sink in what he was implying. I lunged to the garage door and pulled it open so hard I knew I was going to have to fix that later, but thankfully it came up easily, so that I stood towering over the youth, shaking.

The boy was young, fifteen at best, but tall standing at my eye level with dark brown hair and matching eyes, with pimples covering most of his unruly and scared face. One hand grabbed the front of his shirt, dragging him so that we were nose to nose and making his eyes go so wide I was sure they were about to fall right out of his head, even as I snapped, "What did you say? Where is he?"

When he only grew more pale and seemed to have stopped breathing, I gave him a forceful but little shake and prompted, "you mentioned Mikey? Dead? Where is he! If you hurt him-"

"No!" the word burst from the kid's mouth, and he began chattering away again at once. "No I swear, I found him groaning in an alley way, I offered to help him and he sent me here, but there was like a lot of blood all over and at first I wasn't even sure if he was breathing and he said he didn't have insurance and he said the pizza was getting cold and-"

"Okay," I breathed, releasing him and letting him take an automatic step back before meeting his eyes and demanding, "Where is he?"

Bobby blurted out the address, and then continued talking, which I was taking to be a nervous habit that made me want to smack him. "I can not believe I am talking to a giant turtle. You are a turtle right, I think that's what the shell is, oh man my older brother's mentioned giant turtles running around the city but I didn't think-"

I reacted on instinct and whacked him upside the head with my staff that was still held loosely in my other hand. He fell unconscious at once and I decided I'd feel bad about that later as I caught him and gently lowered him to the ground. Snatching my shell cell out of its pocket I sprinted back to the elevator and made quick work of tracking Mike's shell cell, then as it was zeroing in on the GPS signal, I made a quick call to April, mashing the elevator button furiously all along the way. April answered on the first ring, and I quickly blew out some hasty explanation that I don't even remember and finished with, "just come pick him up and take him to the police station. Tell him you found him somewhere, anywhere, and make damn sure that he thinks this was all some crazy dream."

By then the slower than a tortoise elevator had made it to ground floor and I accidentally hung up on April in my mad haste to check on Mikey's signal even as I blew into the lair screaming, "Guys, guys!"

There was a loud crash from the kitchen and an even louder crash as the couch was flipped over as both brothers reacted to my panicked form and were at my side before I'd even finished shouting demanding to know what was wrong.

"Mikey!" I blurted out before blowing past them straight for my bag I'd left inside my lab. I managed to snatch it up and pull it over my shoulder and had just reached for the lair door when two strong hands grabbed me so hard there would be bruises later, turned me around so that the room spun, and I was staring into a pair of wild brown eyes with fear lacing Raph's every tone as he demanded, "what about Mikey!"

I tried to answer, but until that moment I hadn't realized I couldn't breath. I tried to take a breath but nothing was happening, air was wheezing out, but not coming back in. This was my fault, all my fault, I'd sent him out there and now he was dead and-

A sharp sting made me suck in a gasp of air on instinct and I blinked several times as the blue eyes I'd been picturing swiftly turned to two mirrored and panicked brown ones. "I'm not sure," I finally answered, wrestling out of Raph's grip and making another mad dash for the door, this time with no resistance, "but I'm going to find out."

TMNT

I never did remember the car ride. Which probably isn't a good thing because I was steering, with the accelerator never really leaving the ground. What I do remember is noise. Leo muttering beside me, could probably guess what he was saying to himself but I didn't really need to hear it right now. Raph cursing up a storm every time I turned a corner too hard and he went sailing into the wall, then a muttered, "hurry up will ya," that would follow. The voice that was missing seemed loudest of all to me. Then there was a screech of tires, and all three of us were out of the van before that sound even faded away.

At first I thought we were at the wrong place. It was dark down here, and the headlights from the van were pointing out towards the road, casting some perfect shadows that hid everything within them. Raph was already moving past me, towards the very back of the blocked off area, and so I went after him. In the few feet that it took me to get back there, my vision adjusted, and then I saw what his keen eyes had seen first. Blood.

Crouching over him, pressing my fingers into the tender area of his neck, I almost missed my own exhale of relief in the rain. After that I was already rummaging around in my bag as Leo snapped, "Not here, can we move him?"

I paused, glanced up at them, then back down at our baby brother before nodding slowly. "He's lost a lot of blood, but it should be safe."

Without another word Leo and Raph came forward and carried him back to the van, this time with Raph driving us back home. I stayed on the floor with him in my arms as Leo rummaged around and finally came back with some blankets, wrapping us both in them to try and make his shivering stop. Now there wasn't any noise, even though I was listening with all my might to try and separate the breathing in my arms from the rest of us.

His recovery was slow, not helped by the fact that he tended to be even more restless when he was being forced to rest, but in time memory of the incident faded. We never even really learned our lesson, because a few years later a similar incident occurred, only this time it was Raph who had decided he could handle such a force on his own.

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I ended up condensing the third chapter when I realized I was mostly writing this for Don's reaction to finding out he may have put his brother in danger. I can't help it, I just love panicking Don. The last paragraph is not a promise of a sequel, sorry, it was just my way of saying that life would continue on for them. So it ended on a bit of a strange note because most of you already can guess what happened. Hope you still enjoyed.


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